Tonight I choose not to rant, but to share my thoughts with all who care to read them. I am not one who is generally given to the media's need to commercialize, over blow and capitalize off of human suffering, but I must say that I have been glued to the television since I came home this evening. Let me start at the beginning.
I am so immersed in my family, my job and just the daily goings on of my life in general that I try , as often as circumstances allow, to keep it light and stay away from the news and depressing headlines of the paper. So as a general rule, I live the daily update vicariously through my husband. I first heard the news that there had been an earthquake in Haiti when my husband told me that some of the families from our children's school were waiting to find out if some of their family members were safe as they were on a missions trip in Haiti, in Port -Au-Prince as a matter of fact. My heart went out to them, but I thought, we live in the land of earth quakes, how bad can it be. Looking back , I feel a little ashamed about my thinking.. Ok, let's face it I feel like a jerk because my bougie, OC attitude dictated my world view. I mean really, the whole world isn't retrofitted for earthquakes and there probably isn't earthquake preparedness week for school children in Mirebalais. I had to change my perspective and it started with me taking a step back.
Tonight, while my husband was putting the children to bed, I just stopped, sat down and turned on the television. I saw parents on their knees crying out, begging for someone to help them save their only child left, who was trapped beneath 1,000 lbs of cracked cement and wire in the structure that was their classroom. I watched a family bury their 28 year old daughter Brigette, a school teacher, who they said didn't have to die because when they found her she was alive, but there was no place for them to take her for help. Her family allowed the news cameras to follow them as they walked to bury her, because they wanted to make sure that people knew her name and remembered her. I do... I looked on as reports who are generally puffed up and full of crap, get choked up, to the point of speechlessness as they listened to the screams of people who were trapped in the buildings behind them. I watched the world stop and cry together for a nation of people, not a country but her people for whom they could do nothing else but pray.
I sat there heart heavy and so torn. I felt useless, helpless, not just because of my initial casual attitude but because now I was moved by compassion to do something, to help the people of Haiti. To make a difference! How, what, where, I'm just a working mom from South County, how can I do anything to help ease the suffering of these people? I'm not rich, I don't have any great platform form which to shout to the nations of the world to tell them to reach out help the people of Haiti. What can I do?!!??!
I vascilated between feelings of motivation and defeat for about an hour until I decided that all that I would Blog. I know, I know, "anticlimactic much Roge", is what you're thinking rigth now, but find that sometimes when there is so much in your heart and you don't necessarily get it all, if you write it down, it makes it just a little bit easier to ponder. So what am I thinking now you ask, well, let me leave you with a few things:
Larry King: "So Krista, you were teaching English language prepardness to Haitian citizens when you were caught in this earthquake, right?"
Krista: With a peaceful smile on her face and beaming with peace,"Yes Larry, I was."
Larry King: " So what is it that you are studying in college that brought you to Haiti?"
Krista: Again with a smile, " Sustainability"
Interview on Larry King Live, Special edition 1/15/10, with American Citizen, Krista Brelsford who was caught in the Haiti quake and has lost her right leg from the keen down due to the injuries she sustained trying to escape the building she taught in.
" The camera lens is too small to capture what is truly going on
here..... " Anderson Cooper on the gravity of the situation that he is reporting on in
Haiti.
" To the people of Haiti, we say to you that you will not be forsaken, you will
not be forgotten".. President Barak Obama
For me, these quotes mean quite a bit. I'm a conservative Republican, yeah, I said it and I usually don't pay a whole lot of attention to what is on CNN, but it was the first channel that I turned on that I found news about the earth quake on and I just went with it and it made me think. I realized , in that moment it didn't matter to me what, who or when was reporting in that moment, it wasn't about that, it was about listening to the cries of the people who need for others like me, people like you, to make sure they get the do the most important thing that they they can, pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment